


regarding virtue

by erebones



Series: spiritassassin week 2k17 [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, SpiritAssassin Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 00:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10752543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: As his blindness grows worse, the simple things sometimes become overwhelming. Baze has patience in spades.





	regarding virtue

**Author's Note:**

> For a "ways you said I love you" prompt from anais-fromanotherplanet, AND for the "Confessions" prompt for the Spiritassassin Week 2017 event. :)

Chirrut puts his hand on the rock wall and stops to catch his breath. It’s a precarious resting place. The sheer cliff face drops away on his left side, and to his right it crumbles and crawls its pitted way up toward the arcing blue sky overhead. It’s probably blue, anyway. Historically, the sky has always been blue.

A scattered handful of stones peel away and clatter off beyond hearing, and a hand touches lightly at his waist. “Chirrut? All right, dah?”

“Fine.” He pulls his cowl a little closer around his face and leans a moment against the cliff. Baze, ever agreeable, follows suit, and their shoulders brush as they stand there like two birds perched on the cusp of flight. “Baze, tell me—is the sky blue today?”

“Yes, very.” There’s a clothy, rummaging sort of sound, and then a canteen is pressed into his hand. He bites the cap and twists. Tepid water flows across his tongue, drawing saliva to his mouth as if he were sitting before a great feast. He breathes in sunlight and cold, sandy slopes, and sighs.

“Is that all? _Very_ blue?”

“ _Well_.” How Baze can pack so much disgruntlement into one tiny syllable is an eternal mystery. “I suppose so. We’re about to come into NaJedha’s orbit, though; you can see it, just on the horizon. A big peachy smudge.”

Dear Baze. He tries so hard. Chirrut blinks against the blotted greyscale bloom of the sun, wishing it were later in the day. If it were later, and the quality of light a little more mellow, he would be able to make out more shapes, if not colors—and if it were later, he would be crouched in a pleasant, dry little cave with his traveling companion, roasting some poor sand creature over the flames of a canned fire. It would be snug, and safe, and Chirrut would be able to keep his eyes open without the ache of sunlight drilling through the back of his skull.

“Here.”

Baze trades the canteen for something else: a thin strip of cloth, Chirrut feels, fingers following the weft of the fabric. It’s not too tightly-woven, long and vaguely rectangular, like a discarded scrap from his silken underrobe. “What’s this?”

“For your eyes. You keep squinting.” He puts the canteen back amongst his things and waits while Chirrut ties it around his head. The glare dims a little, and he feels a wave of relief come over him so strong he can taste it, sickly-sweet and aromatic in the back of his his throat.

“Thank you,” he whispers. The words don’t feel adequate, but better ones won’t come.

“Want me to take point?”

“If we tried switching places now, one of us would fall. Let’s just press on. We’re almost to the top—I can feel it.”

“All right,” Baze says comfortably. He makes no move to straighten away from the cliff wall. After a moment of breathless uncertainty, Chirrut fumbles amongst their tangled robes and takes his hand. Baze clasps back readily, and his thumb is broad and calloused against the back of Chirrut’s knuckles. “Ey-ah, take your time.”

Chirrut’s world is a blur of smeared greys and reds when he squints his eyes open, bordered by the thick globules of his lashes pressed flat against the blindfold. In his other hand is his staff, knobbled but sturdy—the tree did not begrudge him the taking of it, he was sure. Baze had confirmed it. As Baze did not begrudge the journey. The medicines and mysticism of the cliff-dwellers would not be enough to save his sight, but Baze had made no word of protest, hadn’t scoffed at the dwindling, flashfire-bright scraps of hope that had led Chirrut on this pilgrimage. Baze had _volunteered_. Chirrut bites his lip. There is a great, unnameable emotion stuck in his craw. He aches to unstick it.

Baze squeezes his hand, suddenly, and a stab of vertigo seizes Chirrut in its icy jaws. “Baze,” he blurts, and it’s terrifying, but the words are dragged out of him by force of his own fear, “Baze, when we return to the Temple, will you stay with me?”

A beat of surprised silence. “Yes. Of course, Chirrut.”

“You didn’t—need to come with me,” Chirrut babbles, uncertain now where his winding thoughts are taking them. _Them_ , always them, one always following the other. Often it has been Baze following Chirrut, but now their patterns trend in the other direction. Both, Chirrut thinks, are equally pleasing. “You could have stayed, and you would have tested for your seventh, and you would be made a Master—”

“You’re mistaken,” Baze interrupts, so gently that Chirrut’s voice notches off as naturally as if he’d done it himself. “I couldn’t have done that, Chirrut, not without you.”

“Don’t talk nonsense—”

“It _isn’t_ nonsense. The honor would mean nothing without you by my side.”

Chirrut’s nostrils flare and his lips turn pinched, unhappy and yet ecstatic. It’s the nearest thing to a declaration that Baze has ever given him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. “I’m holding you back, then,” he croaks, and Baze grunts a negative.

“No. For me, there is no holding back or running ahead without you. I go where you go, always.”

His next gasp is wet and miserable and amazed. He feels Baze’s pulse against his thumb, stammering in sync with his own, and enlightenment blooms from a place deep inside him that he only ever feels when in communion with the Force.

“I love you.”

He says it like he’s realizing it for the first time, but really, he thinks he’s always known it—he just hasn’t always known the right words. Beside him, Baze hums low in his throat.

“Well, finally.”

“ _Baze_.”

“It’s reciprocated, you know.”

Chirrut wants to laugh and rage at him, but he does neither—he feels that too much noise in one direction or another would be enough to knock them clear off the cliffside and into the great blue unknowable sky. “Would it kill you to say the words?”

“Si ah lah, Chirrut.” _Patience is a virtue, indeed._ “Let’s make camp, and then I won’t have to use words at all.”

Chirrut shivers. His throat relaxes, and he is overcome with relief, with affection. Stubborn old bantha. He wouldn’t trade him for anything in the galaxy.


End file.
